The Mask
by Lp37451
Summary: Tony Stark had a mask. Shame no one could see through it to the broken man underneath. M because I'm paranoid.


Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. That's how everyone saw him. It was hard to shed the previous public image of oneself even after becoming a superhero and saving the world on countless occasions. No one saw him as anyone but that. It didn't bother him much anymore. Liar. He couldn't do anything about it so he had just stopped trying.

He always wore a mask. Not literally of course. But he acted like the arrogant, narcissistic asshole everyone expected him to be to hide what was really happening. Being Iron Man had changed Tony, for better and worse. The Avengers had changed him again, and then again, and then Siberia again. None of them had noticed. Not after New York, after the Mandarin, after thinking he had lost JARVIS who was one of the six he really considered family at the time. Those being, Pepper (of course), Rhodey (again obvious), JARVIS, DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers. Depressing thought that half of his family he had literally made of metal. He had been so incredibly happy when he found JARVIS had saved himself, despite the killer robot threatening to wipe out humanity.

Back to the point. They didn't notice any of it. Didn't even ask if he was okay after falling over 300 feet out of a space wormhole he thought he was going to die in. He had to admit. It had been terrifying. The cold, mixed in with the suffocating lack of oxygen and seeing in front of his a ginormous army of aliens. The loneliness, the quiet. Tony had thought he would die cold, and alone. Without even getting a chance to say goodbye. Didn't matter, Tony sucked at goodbyes. He would shudder at his last confrontation with Howard. That had been the first and last time that Howard had hit him. Before it had just been words. Howard had been so great with words, he managed to make Tony feel worthless without batting an eye. Probably the main reason Tony is so fucked up today. Not liking being handed things? Howards fault. Hating himself? Partially Howard's fault the rest was him. Trust issues? Howard, Stane, and Rogers fault. The list went on and on. Howard never said he loved Tony, or that he liked him. He only talked about three things, work, his mistake of Tony, and the shining Jesus that was Steve Rogers. Always looking for him, always talking about him. Always telling Tony since he was only four that Steve Rogers would have been a better son than he ever could. Tony was fucked up from that sure, but then came Afghanistan. Talk about a cruel way to wake up to reality.

The wake-up call had begun with the explosion and shrapnel from his own weapon, then lying awake on that table for three hours, tied down, literally feeling someone's hands on his heart. The only thing he remembered from that was the unbearable pain of it all. Looking back now, he realised, he had deserved it. Countless had died because terrorists had gotten their hands on his weapons and even the shrapnel wasn't enough. All the pain in the world wouldn't be enough before he got what he deserved. So that had fucked him up. Then the torture after that had fucked him up even more. He still wouldn't willingly go in large bodies of water. If he did then the panic would set in and all he could think of was the water suffocating him, filling his lungs, the electromagnet they had stuck on his chest sparking and the pain of the convulsions that followed. Then he had gotten out. Building the Mark I and having to watch Yinsen die along the way. He had gone back home and built Iron Man. Then discovered that the man he considered his father more than Howard had betrayed him, sold weapons to terrorists, gotten those terrorists to kidnap him when he was in Afghanistan and told him in the best way possible. Paralyzing him and ripping out his arc reactor was just great. Just great. But he had managed to kill him and save the day, escaping as the hero. This always made him bitter to think about.

Then he had been dying from the only thing keeping him alive and that had been a blast.

Then came New York and the Avengers. The horror of the alien wormhole thing and the Chitauri. He had invited the Avengers to join him in the tower afterwards. He couldn't trust himself to be alone. But then again he didn't really trust the Avengers either. Not Captain America, who would have made Howard so proud

"man in a suit" The way he was the image of American perfection and how he looked disappointed when seeing Tony,

"Take that off what are you?"

He didn't trust Clint, too snarky for his own good, most of the time thinking Tony was just a pampered rich boy joyriding in a metal suit.

Then there was Thor, he liked Thor but didn't trust him.

Natasha or Natalia or whoever the fuck she was was about untrustworthy as he could tolerate. But she also disappointed him. A superspy should be able to notice when someone is basically standing on a skyscraper with a megaphone yelling "HELP" as fireworks spell out the word around them but no.

Bruce was a different story, Bruce was his science-bro, the only one who could understand him when Tony went on a rant about some new idea. The main differences between them would be Bruce is shy, calm, and rarely sarcastic, oh, and Bruce had only tried to kill himself once.

Right. Tony Stark is Suicidal. He has tried to kill himself, 6 times now? Something like that. The first was when he was only 13, Tony had tried after he had been kidnapped again and his father hadn't paid the ransom money and left Tony there for a month, he only got out when Aunt Peggy had gotten back from some mission and found out. Then he tried again after Afghanistan and Stane, they didn't know how much it hurt to have your father figure try to kill you. Then when he was dying anyway from palladium he had gotten incredibly reckless like the idiot he was and done some pretty suicidal things. Tony tried again after New York, he took out his arc reactor and just put it down while he felt the shrapnel slowly worm its way to his heart. Again after Ultron cause, the blame for all the deaths was just… Then again after Siberia. After all his friends turned against him and lied to him (Cap) put him down, (Cap) and tried to kill him (Cap again). That's not even counting the total disregard Tony has for his life.

And no one ever noticed.

Then there was the New Avengers.

Wanda, who hated him, but he couldn't blame her, he hated himself.

Vision, who Tony again considered his family.

Rhodey, who was some of his only family and always will be. Those people Tony didn't know who turned up for Germany.

Sam, he assumed that Sam hated him as well.

And then there was Peter. The Spiderling had managed to make Tony smile, a rare thing nowadays, Soon Tony had considered Peter his family as well. Somehow the kid idolized him after everything he'd done and Tony just ended up loving the kid.

Now things had gotten difficult again with the depression, and the anxiety, and insomnia, and the joys of PTSD. Tony almost never slept. He just went back to building a hundred suits down in the lab like he had after New York. When he did eventually collapse from exhaustion he would have dreams that were worse than before. He had never gone to a therapist so Tony still had the scars from his past. On the worst of nights, Tony would have a dream that went along the lines of pain in his chest, on the operating table in a dark cave, Obie taunting at him somehow before ripping out his literal heart this time. Then he would fall through space where he was cold and alone, he'd close his eyes and open them again in Siberia where Cap's shield would come down again and again and again, ripping him in two. Cap would laugh, cold and cruel as he cut Tony in half. The others would be in the shadows also laughing. Then Tony would scream himself awake. Have a couple of Panic Attacks, then continue working himself to death.

"Sorry, Tony. You know I wouldn't do this if I had any other choice, But he's my friend."

Betrayal, he should expect it by now. It's all everyone in his life had done.

"So was I"


End file.
